Can a new Scots Tory leader regain the party’s mojo?
The Scottish Tories have got themselves a new leader.
This might not move share prices or the relative values of sterling, and gossipers in the markets will now be asking “who is Douglas Ross?”
But the same could have been said of Ruth Davidson back in 2011 when she became leader, shortly before her phenomenal success in detoxifying the party enough for the Tories to replace Scottish Labour as the SNP’s main opposition.
When Davidson decided to not come back from her maternity leave (one of the few times a politician was being honest when committing to “spend more time with the family”), her replacement Jackson Carlaw dissipated much of the support she had built up.
That the Conservatives were not totally wiped out in Scotland at last December’s General Election was seen as a triumph, but they were reduced by more than half from 13 seats to only six. The loss barely registered thanks to Boris Johnson crashing through the Red Wall in England and winning the best Conservative majority in 32 years since Margaret Thatcher romped home with a majority of 102 in 1987, but north of the border the result was far from heartening.
The reason for the relatively poor Scottish performance was that both Davidson and Carlaw had previously set out their stalls as being vehemently against Brexit, and prone to criticising Johnson in particular. This only served to strengthen the hand of the SNP, who could ask voters quite reasonably “why vote for a party that does not believe in itself?” when campaigning on the doorsteps. It also helped confirm doubts about the benefits of Brexit and Johnson’s competency.
Still, at the beginning of the year the SNP was in trouble. Johnson’s win and his commitment to refuse another Scottish independence referendum during the full parliamentary term lifted spirits. Likewise, the divisions opening in the SNP about how to respond to Westminster facing down of their referendum demands, along with the trial and eventual acquittal of former leader Alex Salmond, made Nicola Sturgeon’s future look less than certain.
Then came the Covid-19 pandemic.
Since the lockdown was implemented in March, Sturgeon has used her daily broadcasts as a means to develop a new persona that has seen her popularity ratings rise while Johnson’s, after initially being strong, have collapsed. A myth has been encouraged in Scotland — and has proven especially popular with Johnson haters — that thanks to Sturgeon, Scotland has managed the pandemic successfully.
This is far from the case. While England’s deaths per million are possibly the worst in the developed world, Scotland’s figures are poor enough to place it third — and when population density is taken into account, they are 10 times worse than England’s. Care home deaths, many of them avoidable, compose nearly 60 per cent of those deaths, and Scottish NHS testing has been diabolical.
The Scottish government was failing in myriad ways, but Carlaw wasn’t succeeding in bringing these blunders to the public’s attention — and support for independence had started to maintain a lead in the polls.
Then the launch of George Galloway’s Alliance4Unity party saw disenchanted Tories, Labour and Lib Dem supporters bury their differences to back the once political pariah and coalesce around the goal of saving the Union. Something had to give, and in a clinical operation last Thursday, the notorious Tory men in grey kilts struck.
Carlaw was replaced by Douglas Ross, MP for Moray (think Baxter’s Soup, RAF bases and fishing), with Ruth Davidson committing to handling Holyrood until he could get back in there at next year’s elections.
Already, Ross is making a difference, moving the focus onto the SNP’s domestic shortfalls — such as the exam results shambles — and calling for an end to US whisky tariffs (which, as it happened, were American retaliation for the EU’s illegal state aid to Airbus in the form of soft loans). The latter issue is marking a crucial change in approach, for it begs the question: will the Scottish Conservatives at last recognise that siding with those who opposed Brexit and Boris was feeding the nationalist dragon and demoralising their own supporters?
Ross showed in his brief time as a Scotland Office minister (before he resigned over the Dominic Cummings affair) that he can be a tenacious and aggressive combatant. This is what his party needs — the Tories must recover their mojo and burst Sturgeon’s bubble.
Unfortunately, he is currently in the wrong place (Westminster rather than Holyrood) so will have to use guile and cunning, arranging set pieces in the Commons and on the stump that can be videoed and distributed via social media to raise his profile. He also has to find some policies (for the Tories have none), and consider how to handle Galloway’s new alliance.
Still, he brings energy and innovation to the Scottish Tories’ cause. The Union’s fortunes have at last taken a turn for the better.
Main image credit: Getty